High unemployment in the construction industry would makes this an ideal time to be doing needed construction, if not for “prevailing wages” legislation that pretends that artificially-high wages prevail. When rooms in motels, seats on air flights, or ads on radio stations don’t sell, the price drops, sometimes drastically, because the assets disappears if not sold. Similarly, you earn more money working at $10/hour than to be without a job at $1000/hour.
And there are plenty of projects that would be undertaken if potential building projects had a big sign on them that said, “Sale! Limited time offer!”
There’s a huge surplus of commercial space. There are many houses going into foreclosure. There’s no surplus of small, modern, industrial space, though. If you’re going to create jobs to replace industries that have become obsolete, you need space for startups to move into. We should be building light industrial space, where there’s 300-1,000 feet of office space, 1,000-10,000 of space for light manufacturing or warehousing, a loading dock for two semis, access to good highways, parking for 30 cars, and all utilities – including T-1 or better Internet, and renting them out to startups who have more vision than they have capital.
It doesn’t have to be government that builds these facilities, although it might make sense for government to build the facilities, then sell them to private investors, as government is in a better position to get clearances for zoning, etc.
But if there’s no place suitable for hatch and nurture startups, we won’t have the job formation here in Lancaster, and Lancaster will end up being an economic backwater in tomorrow’s world.
